The Liberty Justice Center sued Friday to overturn President Trump's new forced-labor tariffs, opening the first legal challenge to duties that took effect at 12:01 a.m. and now cover imports from 60 trading partners.

The suit, filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York, tests whether Trump can maintain a tariff wall around the U.S. economy after the Supreme Court struck down his 2025 "Liberation Day" tariffs in February. The libertarian group represented the businesses that won that earlier case.

"The administration allowed one global tariff to expire and immediately replaced it with another under a different statute," said Sara Albrecht, chair of the Liberty Justice Center. "Changing the statute doesn't change the law. Every tariff authority has limits, and every administration must respect them."

Trump on Thursday invoked Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act to impose 10 percent to 12.5 percent duties on 60 economies including the European Union, China, Japan, Canada and Australia. The 12.5 percent rate applies to countries with no forced-labor import ban; the 10 percent rate applies to those the administration says are not enforcing existing bans. Together the levies cover 99.4 percent of U.S. imports and took effect minutes after a 150-day stopgap 10 percent global tariff expired under Section 122 of the same law.

Trading partners protest

Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell called the levies "completely unjustified" Friday and said Canberra would keep lobbying the U.S. Trade Representative to lift them. New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, whose country also faces the 12.5 percent rate, called the measure "extremely disappointing" and wrote on X that "Tariffs are not the way — they drive up costs and uncertainty for businesses."

European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told Channel News Asia the U.S. rationale was "not really grounded," citing EU labor protections. China's foreign ministry said Beijing "opposes all forms of unilateral tariffs." Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said Tokyo had been assured no new duties would layer on top of a 10 percent rate already agreed with Washington.

The legal argument

The Liberty Justice Center's earlier suit persuaded the Supreme Court in February to strike down tariffs Trump had imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 statute never used for global levies. The new duties instead rely on Section 301, the same authority Trump used against China in his first term; those tariffs survived court challenges.

Wendy Cutler, a former senior U.S. trade official now at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said the Section 301 basis is harder to unwind. "Time will tell whether the third attempt to impose tariffs is the charm and this action stands up to legal challenges," Cutler said.

Caroline Freund, dean of the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy, told the BBC the administration was "looking for a legal reason to put the tariffs in," and the goal "is about the trade deficit and it is about US manufacturing, it is not about forced labour."

On Capitol Hill

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, called the duties "a blatant attempt to revive Trump's illegal global tariffs under a different name." Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., wrote on X that "President Trump isn't serious about combating forced labor" because the administration applies the same 12.5 percent rate to China as to Australia.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer defended the measure. "The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it's well past time for our trading partners to do the same," Greer said. Neither the White House nor USTR had answered the Liberty Justice Center complaint by press time.

The Committee for a Responsible Budget calculates the new levies, combined with duties Trump announced this month on Canada and Brazil, will replace less than 60 percent of the revenue lost when the Supreme Court struck down the earlier tariffs. USTR is separately investigating 16 countries for what it calls manufacturing overcapacity, which Cutler said could produce another round of Section 301 tariffs in the fall.